Expo Notes: Cross-dressing

CodeWeavers seems to be feeling ignored. Like its two chief competitors, VMWare and Parallels, the company makes software that lets you run Windows apps on a Mac. But all too often, when the discussion turns to Windows-on-a-Mac, those other two hog all the attention, and CodeWeavers is left out. That could be why the CodeWeavers booth at Expo is staffed with cross-dressers and celebrity impersonators.

Like VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop, CodeWeavers’ CrossOver Mac lets you run Windows software on an Intel Mac. Unlike those other two, CrossOver Mac doesn’t require a licensed copy of Windows; instead, it uses Wine—an open-source implementation of the Windows API under Unix—to run Windows apps. It gets the job done, even if it goes about it in a different way.

But that message isn’t apparently enough to grab eyeballs at a trade-show. So, to promote CrossOver Mac 10—which the company is dubbing “The Impersonator”—the CodeWeavers booth has a Captain Jack Sparrow, a Fred Flintstone, some kind of princess in pink, and a guy with a beard rocking a black dress. It’s certainly getting the company attention at Expo, though perhaps not the kind it really deserves.